Twenty years, I've waited
by StarGirl909
Summary: Angel has not happened and whatever is to happen in Nevermore, doesn't happen Fang is waiting where the hawks are twenty years later for Max. What suprises will come Fang's way? THIS IS NOT A ONE-SHOT! Due to death, attempted suicide, and torture, the rating has gone up.
1. Twenty years later

**AN: After I read Fang's note… this is the one scenario that played in my head over and over. I'm normally a Fax fan. DON'T GET ME WRONG, THIS **_**IS **_**FAX! Just disguised. I had to give my story to the world… and if JP sees maybe he'll come to his senses. **

**Disclaimer: DO I LOOK LIKE A FIFTY-SOMETHING YEAR OLD MAN? I THOUGHT NOT, I'M NOT JP, GET OVER IT! **

**-StarGirl909**

Fang P.O.V. – 

Twenty years after Fang. Angel and Nevermore never happened… even if Nevermore hasn't yet… 

Finally, after twenty years of not seeing Max… or the Flock… but mostly Max, I was finally going to see her. I sank into thoughts about her brown hair… blonde sun streaks… brown eyes…

Then, I heard a flapping sound. I grinned not looking up, "Hi, Max."

"Fang?" Max asked, just one problem, that wasn't Max's voice…

"IGGY?" I asked, exasperated. "Where's Max?"

"Pffft. No, 'hi' for me?" His eyes shone blue… brighter than before…

"Did you get your sight back?" I questioned, curiously.

Iggy smiled a little. "Yeah, after we saved the world."

"So… where's Max?" I repeated, wondering where she was.

Iggy's light ghost of a smile vanished. "Fang… she sacrificed herself to save the world. She's… dead." My eyes widened, I could feel them. Sadness, fright, and concern overwhelmed me.

_She's gone. She's gone. She's gone. She's… dead._

Lucky for me, Iggy still thought I didn't talk much. Now, I talk almost as much as… Max used to…

"Before she was killed, Max told me to come here and say that she never stopped loving you." Iggy said, uncomfortably.

I grabbed Iggy's shoulders and shook him senseless. "When did she… y'know?"

Iggy pushed me away. "Three months ago. Bye, Fang. Hope whatever you left for was important enough." Then, he left me, staring at nothing. Cast into oblivion. And I knew I would never be the same guy I used to be.

**AN: So, yeah, this is not a one-shot but did anyone else think of this happening after they read Fang? 'Cause this really was the first thing that popped into my head after I read the note.**


	2. The backstory

**AN: So, I decided I should **_**finally **_**update this. Here it goes :) **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing! I live in a cardboard box in a roadside ditch :P**

Iggy P.O.V.

I almost felt sorry for Fang. But even if it was to protect us, and I don't see how it was… it only broke Max so much that she had little wanting to stay alive, much less, save the world! Then, Dylan turned out to be an evil zombie. Max was sick of people treating her like she couldn't handle herself. So, she went to save the world on her own. The rest of the Flock got there almost too late, as an unconscious Max slid to the floor. Only to have her clone run in. Max II rushed and pushed Max out of the way before the giant pulley magnet thing could crush her. Unfortunately, Max II was killed. Not Max.

"Max!" I shouted.

"Hi, Iggy." Max said, hollowly.

Max P.O.V.

Yes, I was alive. But I couldn't face Fang, couldn't let him see what power he had over me. So all we had to do was switch up the story, where I went for revenge on Dylan, and got crushed. No Max II in this story. Iggy and I were the only ones left now. Nudge wanted to see her mom, and eventually did. Seeing her that happy, Angel wanted it, too. So we found Angel and Gazzy's parents who were grieving over what they did, and were so happy to see their kids. Iggy hates his parents. As you should know (I write this stuff down, the greatest thing you could do is read it!).

Iggy and I live at my mom's house with her and Ella. Of course, Iggy and Ella are dating, which is a little awkward, like having my brother date my sister…

Anyway… Iggy and I were flying to the Martinez household, when I saw something. Iggy shook his head,

"Don't worry about it, Max!" And went over to the house but I stayed back.

"I'm going to check it out." I said.

"And I'm going to check Ella out…" Iggy being thee perv he is said.

"She's not a library book!" I yelled at him. I couldn't hear what he said after that because I was too busy flying over to the thing. Only to see a crow.

I laughed at myself. Then, I heard a voice say,

"Max?"

I froze. Finally, I turned around and gaped.

"F-fang?"

**AN: Sorry, about the cliffy, I've just always wanted to do one :) oh, and sorry it's so short. Next time, I'll make it longer. Promice.**


	3. Is that really you?

**AN: Sorry, I've been gone for so long, I've been really, really, really uninspired and crap so…**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Maximum Ride, Dylan would never have existed and Fang wouldn't have been such an idiot and left.**

Max P.O.V.

"Yeah, it's me…" Fang said, not paying attention. He was really close to me now, he got closer and closer.

_ What is he doing? Is he gonna-?_

He was so close our noses were just barely touched and he… _slapped _me across the face.

"What the heck, Fang?" I screamed at him, enraged.

He grinned and hugged me. "You're not dead!"

"Yeah… isn't that special…?" I said, quietly, not exactly getting what he was doing.

"I thought you were though!"

I almost laughed. "That means you fell for it."

"C-can I see the Flock?" Fang stutters and I'm surprised.

"Oh… um, yeah, of course." I say a little dazed.

"Lead the way!" He says wearing a ghost of a smile. I nod and I fly off with him following. I keep thinking about how Iggy's going to try and bash my head in once I get back._ But_, I sighed, _it didn't matter because Fang's back. Oh, my God, Fang's back! _I stopped flying for a second and was falling down, but caught myself. The thought hadn't fully registered until then… Fang was… here… not gone… I spun around, only to see him there with his what-the-heck-is-going-on-you-crazy-freak? face on. I laughed.

"Uhm… you OK?" He asked, coming up behind me.

I chuckled at him. "Yeah…"

"Then, let's g-" I didn't let him finish. I hugged him, and pulled away.

"What was that-" he started but I'm_ not _going to let him think he can just do that any freaking time he wants, so I slap him so hard across the face I'm _positive _it's going to leave a bruise.

"Max!" Fang yells at me.

"That's what you get for just leaving us, Pretty Boy." I remark and kick him in the groin. "c'mon, you're making me late for dinner." And so I, the Great Maximum Ride, sped off flying, not caring whether he was following or not.

Fang P.O.V.

_What the flippidy doo da day? _I thought, as I watched her wings spread out and quickly run away from me. Like all those times I had kissed her when I was 15. She'd changed so much, her brown hair had been cut a little shorter and there were more blonde streaks now, she'd grown hips and looked pretty. Well, she was pretty before but now it's a whole new level of pretty, like beautiful… and I sound like a poet so I'm going to stop now.

I just had my black hair cut, so it looked like when I had it cut in New York, I had on a black t-shirt, and jeans. You see? I haven't changed much.

Carefully, as I could I followed her, slowly, quietly though. So she didn't try to kill me again.

And that's when I saw a house in the distance. The Dr. Martinez household. They'd been living there the whole time? I landed and wondered,

_What happened to that, "Perfect Half" Dylan boy?_

**AN: That's all for today, sorry, it's just that I've been working on a book called, Kamp Games, for the Hunger Games and if you want to read it, it's on my fav. Stories list and if you want to check out my friend Candace's page, look at my fav. Author's she is SnowAvalanche17.**

**Goodbye, and good day, XD**

**-StarGirl909.**


	4. Where are they now?

**AN: Sorry that it's been so long, I was working on a fic with my friend on her site and then schoolwork, I was drowned in it. But here I am. Hope you enjoy :) R & R, please. **

**WARNING- This chapter is a little dark, contains attempted suicide, torture, and death.**

**Helpful Hint- Yes, Iggy and Max did lie to Fang about a lot of stuff concerning the Flock. But only because they were scared and wanted to wait a while longer to tell the truth.**

**(For disclaimer, look at page 1)**

**-StarGirl909**

**Where are they now?**

Her 26-year-old face was scrunched up in a look of complete hatred.

"I CAN'T EVEN TRUST ANY OF YOU TO DO THIS RIGHT!" Her nerves were wound tighter than her blonde hair in its bun. Her grey skirt and matching shirt were wrinkled beyond the point of a mother's obsession.

"Angel…" Her brother, Gazzy, shook his head at her. "Please, just… don't." Nudge bounced over, her brown hair nearly to her chin, but not quite reaching it. She reached for her phone but Gazzy just shook his head, sighing.

"This isn't…" At the hurt look in her brown eyes, Gazzy's body shook, as he tried so hard not to cry like the 10-year-old boy, he seemed to die as. His life had been turned so upside down from that age and as he looked at the 32-year-old girl he had known his whole life so sad, so hurt, and just so… tired. He needed to act like the 29-year-old he was. He put his hand on her shoulders.

"I… I didn't mean it like that. You know that. I just wanna hear your voice, not the robot's." Angel then growled.

"I DO NOT wanna ever hear you mention anything about that! EVER!" Her eyes changed to an awful shade of dark red and Gazzy winced. He'd just been so used to the miserable blue eyes that whenever her's changed colors, he couldn't look at her. Even though he knew that hurt her more.

"Ang, I'm sorry, it's just that-"

"Fuh-a-ng?" A mechanical mess of a voice echoed through the room, as Nudge had reached her phone.

"You know we couldn't see him! I just… couldn't tell him about…" Angel started to weep. Her knees hit the rocky cave floor as Nudge stroked her hair, knowing that if she dared to touch her phone, Angel would only cry harder. Gazzy just couldn't take the pain-and-cry-your-guts-out festival, so whipping his wings out, he nearly jumped out of the cave when a small voice whispered,

"A-are you l-leaving l-like F-Fang d-d-d-did?" Gazzy shot back to the ground.

"Oh, Ella, no! I'd never! I'm not like him!" Her black hair was whipped out of her face by the wind, forcing him to stare back at Ella's brown eyes. _They're just so much like… _No! He couldn't think of her now. Not on a painful day like this.

"Do you w-wish you c-could?" She stated, plainly. And if he hadn't been looking in her eyes, he would've believed she was OK. That she couldn't care less about… _that _day.

"Wish I could what?" He answered, simply.

Tears spilled down her eyes, slowly, as if stuck in time, as she hesitantly said, "W-wish you c-could leave. J-just fly into the wind and p-pretend that y-you don't have a f-freakin' care a-at all?" Her words got more powerful, and with each syllable, she stung him more and more.

"Do you wish that you had died that day? Instead of them? 'Cause you think that will ease our pain? No! Because it'll ease _yours_! You'll be free of having to live with the fact that we watched them die and couldn't do a thing about it! Free of having to listen to Nudge's squeaky, robotic phone-voice every time she needs to speak? Free of having to look at us every day as a reminder of how pained you are?!" Her voice had grown in volume and now both Nudge and his little sister were staring at him. Pain. Hurt. Depression. All things he had caused. But, worse of it was, every single one of Ella's words were true. He _did _wish that he wasn't stuck here, as much as he loved his sister. He wanted peace. He wanted it all _gone_. But most of all, he wished he had died that day, 18 years ago, in the place of Max and Iggy. He wished he could've been the big hero, before they took their lives. He didn't want this. He didn't want for his friends to be dead. For Angel to not have had her eyes nearly melt out. For Nudge to have had her vocal cords surgically removed. For him to be able to lift off into the air and soar through the sky, like he used to. But no, they'd clipped his wings and made them a dead-weight.

His friend's eyes, all staring at him. Angel being the one having the most effect on him. His poor sister… her eyes were a dark shade of purple. Depression was readable in her eyes, due to the radiation of the light bulbs the white-coats had her under. And it was _his fault_.

He wished he could've been stronger, faster, smarter. And, for the first time in 20 years of his being "the adult", Gazzy sank to the ground and cried. And all of their hopes were crushed, instantly.

"What happened to Dylan?" Fang said, stupidly. His black hair was to his ears, and he looked like he was dressed up all fancy. Idiot. Max sighed, as she stepped into the house that used to smell of cookies and old perfume. Now… it just smelled like trash. Iggy went over to the mini-fridge and got out some left-over soup.

Fang's earlier question was lost in his mind as he stopped and stared. "Wh-where's the Flock?"

"This… this is the Flock, Fang." Max replied, softly. "The last 18 years have been devoted to finding them." Her heart sank lower.

"But… no! My… my leaving! It was supposed to-"

"SUPPOSED TO WHAT, FANG?! Make us all depressed to the point that Nudge nearly tried suicide?" Max screamed and Iggy left the room in a rush. No use getting in the middle of them… plus, they were scary…

"No… it was supposed to save you!" That made Max furious as ever. Rage danced in her eyes. "MIGHTY FINE JOB THAT DID, HUH?! I WATCHED THEM CRY FOR WEEKS! I WATCHED THEM TEAR HER APART!"

"Calm down, Max, just tell me what happened. I want to help you."

Max breathed, heavily. "OK, Iggy and I will tell the story."

Iggy got up from behind the couch and sighed, sadly. "Right."

"18 years ago…" Max started, her voice cracking, slightly, as she tried to stop herself from breaking down into tears.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~18 years ago…~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_Two years, seven months, twenty-three days without Fang. Not a sign. Not a clue. They'd traveled all across the world in the past two years. But he was gone. _

_Angel was smiling softly in her sleep when all the sudden, she screamed. The massive roar woke up both Nudge and Gazzy, as they had been sleeping not more than 10 seconds ago. _

_**Nudge's eyes were filled with tears that trailed down her cheeks and into her mouth, tasting much like the ocean. It would finally just… end. The heavy weight of the world that had rested at their shoulders and seemed to like it there, as it had stayed for their whole lives. The wind gently brushed at her hair, making her softly smile. Peace. She would finally have it. Nudge breathed a heavy breath, as it would be her last. And jumped. **_

_**Even though she wanted it, Nudge winced when she felt that she'd neared the bottom. And she felt warm hands grab her. The angels really did want this. She opened her eyes to an angry Iggy, as they soared up into the cliff to the snapping of cameras. **_

"_**Don't you EVER do something like that, again!" he ordered.**_

"_**Iggy, I-" She started, her throat was so dry.**_

"_**No. Just… Don't." And she didn't. **_

_**But, not a day later, newspapers were filled with pictures of the 'Bird Kids'. Giving the white-coats a perfect location of where the experiments were. And they were coming for them.**_

_Angel woke with a start. ____Tears were streaming down her cheeks, heavily. _

"_They're coming, Max!" Angel wept and started to fly. _

"_What?" Iggy asked, not understanding. Max frowned, slightly. Nudge had tried to jump off a cliff a week ago. It wasn't weird that Angel would be having awful dreams about it._

"_Angel, it's OK, it was just a dream." Max stated and pulled Angel right back to the ground. _

"_NO!" Angel screamed and jumped in front of her half-asleep brother, a dart piercing her skin as she screamed and hit the ground, unconscious. The rest of the Flock got into fighting stance in a circle around Angel's motionless body. Nudge was afraid that Angel had been killed. But that only made her madder. _

_They fought as best as they could. But there were too many white-coats. And the last thing they all saw was a dart and everything faded to black._

_The Flock woke up three days later in a room with tinted windows, white walls, and a mechanical door like the ones you see in the movies. But, tragically, this wasn't a movie. They all groaned and sat up, tiredly, the darts still having a great affect on them._

"_ROLE CALL!" Max yelled, getting straight to her leader job. But the yelling really wasn't necessary in the small room. "Iggy!"_

"_Here!" Coughed a voice that once would've joked about how they needed a vacation. It saddened them all._

"_F-" No, Fang wasn't here. "Nudge!"_

"_I-I… here." Called out Nudge, her voice dry and croaked. _

"_Gazzy!" Max called out, her voice getting more and more depressed as the voices spoke._

"_H-here." The voice called out, sounding fine, but Gazzy himself was red-eyed and had a nearly purple face._

"_A-Angel…"_

"_H-hi, M-M-Maxxx…" Angel stuttered, her hair tangled and dirty, caked with mud. "M-my arm h-h-h-hurts…" Tears would have been spilled but none of them had had any water in the past three days. They just sat there, tired and beaten. It was over. It had been from the start. _

_An hour or so later of moping, a man, guarding by 2 erasers, strode into the room. He nodded, quickly at one of the erasers and he grabbed Max, the other snatched Iggy. Both were too tired and weak to fight it, and blacked out, hearing the cries of the children that had been left behind. _

_They were dumped into a room with Dylan after regaining consciousness after who-knows-how-many hours of torture. Max gasped, Dylan had left with Jeb one year ago and they hadn't seen him since. _

"_Dylan?!" She noticed that he was tightly gripping something in his hands, fully paying attention to that as if he hadn't heard Max. Maybe he hadn't. "DYLAN!" She screamed and he looked up. _

"_Hello, Max." He stated, calmly. Too calm._

"_Wh-what happened to you, man?" Iggy asked, his eyes never leaving Dylan's red ones. He had a black eye, his nose was swollen, and his left arm looked broken._

"_Jeb tricked me. I was never anything but a zombie trapped in a human's body." He held up the weird vial-cup thing. "This… it's going to save me, guys. I'm going to get the peaceful death I was deprived of." Before, Max or Iggy even had the chance to realize what he meant, Dylan quickly drank the liquid poison in the vial, dropping dead to the floor almost immediately, screaming. But when he stopped, he had a slight look of peace. "I- I was nothing but a zombie rag-doll. Programmed to be what they wanted me to be… I-" His eyes rolled into the back of his head and death consumed him. That drove Max out of her daze and she tried to scream but it came out as a painful hiccup. _

_It was nearly a day before Max and Iggy were removed from the room where they had watched Dylan die. The white-coat left, but came out a minute later with Maya. She seemed to be in the same condition as Dylan had been. Four erasers came into the room and pinned Iggy and Max to the wall. The white-coat, whose name-tag read Gus, grabbed a saw and drove it through her stomach. Maya was dead in seconds, but not before a pained wail escaped her lips. But, Gus kept on going, tearing her guts out of her dead body, blood shooting all over his face. He didn't seem to mind. It went like that for thirty minutes. He then made us watch as he incinerated Dylan into ashes and then put them into the cup Dylan had drank out of. _

"_Look behind you." He said in an accent neither could describe. The erasers let go of their captives and both turned. It was the room they'd woken up in, Max was sure of it. She wasn't sure how, but she did. That's when she noticed Nudge, laid out on the floor. She hadn't noticed her earlier because she was right up against the wall, cowering._

_Then, a white-coat pushed Gazzy and Angel back into the room, but took Nudge out. _

"_I LOVE YOU, GUYS!" Nudge wailed, now fearing her death. Angel's eyes turned bluer than usual and Gazzy tried to fly, but stayed grounded. _

_Hours later, Nudge came back into the room, quietly, her face looking directly at the ground._

_Angel rushed over to her. "Are you alright, Nudge?" Nudge shook her head, slowly. "Nudge… talk to us…pl-" Angel stopped. Nudge's eyes looked up and it was like reading a book. She no longer could. Ever again._

_No one talked for a while. _

_After nearly two hours, a white-coat burst in. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but Max and Iggy are dead." If Max hadn't known he was lying, she'd have thought that he was actually being sympathetic-_

_The man then threw the cup of Dylan's ashes to the ground, "Iggy-" And pushed Maya's inside-out body on top of the ashes. "-And Max." –Too bad you can't spell sympathetic without 'pathetic'._

"_Max… Iggy…" Gazzy whispered and blinked, not believing they were dead. _

"_NO!" Angel cried. "They- they can't… no…"_

_Nudge just stood there, unable to grieve like the others, crying heavily._

_Max and Iggy watched for weeks, as the pained children wept over "their" dead bodies. They'd banged on the sound-proof, tinted windows. They could hear them, see them, but not the other way around. And then, the white-coats just let them go. I mean, hey, it was what those nasty experiments got for escaping. _

_A week later, Max and Iggy were also free. Free to grieve and search for the Flock the rest of their lives. They'd gone straight to Dr. M's but she said that Ella had snuck off with the Flock. She was trying to find them and had no idea where they were now. _

"-And we waited for a while, but then, we decided to travel the world for weeks at a time with Dr. M." Max explained as Iggy started to pick up the story, as they had been doing for a while.

"But, two years ago, Dr. M had an amorism in France. She's still alive, but they couldn't risk moving her. At first we stayed there, but she told us we had to keep going on to find her daughter and the Flock. So, we did."

"Fang," Max started slowly, afraid that if she pounced her question onto him, he'd bolt again. "Could you help us to find the Flock?"


End file.
